Tencent Yuanbao Surpasses Doubao to Become the Second on the Apple App Store Free List
Recently, there have been new changes in the Apple China region’s free app rankings. Tencent Yuanbao has surpassed Doubao and risen to second place in the China region’s Apple free app download rankings, with DeepSeek occupying the top spot.
In this regard, Tencent Yuanbao is a rising star. It was launched in May 2024 and is based on Tencent Hunyuan Large Model at its core, focusing on productivity tools. At the beginning of its launch, Tencent Yuanbao did not have strong promotion efforts, resulting in a significant gap in user numbers compared to products from other manufacturers. According to QuestMobile data, as of December last year, Tencent Yuanbao had only 2.11 million monthly active users, ranking eighth.
However, since January this year, after being split from TEG (Technology Engineering Group) to CSIG (Cloud and Smart Industries Group), Tencent Yuanbao has embarked on a rapid iteration path.
On February 13th, following the footsteps of many companies, Tencent Yuanbao integrated the DeepSeek-R1 full version and supported both Hunyuan and DeepSeek models; four days later, the company’s self-developed deep thinking model “Hunyuan T1” was launched in grayscale. Due to WeChat Search launching AI search function for grayscale testing, a large number of users flooded in causing a sudden increase in service pressure. Tencent urgently called on Yuanbao to support WeChat Search.
On February 21st, Tencent Yuanbao launched a new feature of DeepSeek – image understanding. Users can turn off online search and send any picture; Yuanbao can provide analysis and understanding based on the content of the picture. Currently, all models within Yuanbao support image understanding, file parsing, online searching for public accounts, and uploading files from WeChat.
A series of intensive updates and optimizations have further enhanced the functions of Yuanbao. The download volume surged dramatically achieving a comeback from ranking low to jumping to second.
The ByteDance-owned Doubao, which was surpassed by Yuanbao, has performed outstandingly in the field of large-scale model applications. As of December last year, Doubao had a monthly active user base of 75.23 million, making it the AI native application with the highest number of monthly active users in China and ranking high on Apple’s free app list.
Currently, the top three spots on Apple’s free app list are all occupied by large model applications, reflecting intense competition and rapid development in China’s large-model industry. Various manufacturers are actively improving product performance and user experience by integrating open-source models or developing their own models to compete for market share. Users will also benefit from continuously innovative and optimized services provided by large-scale model applications.
However, the rise of DeepSeek and fierce competition from major players have brought significant challenges to AI large-model startups such as Moonshot AI and 01.AI. Finding their unique development path will be an urgent issue for these companies to address.
